Comment on "The Illusion of Invariant Quantities in Life Histories"

doi:10.1126/science.1123679

Account Information

Guest Alerts | Access Rights | My Account | Sign In

Technical Comments

Comment on "The Illusion of Invariant Quantities in Life Histories"

Van M. Savage,¹^* Ethan P. White,²^,4 Melanie E. Moses,³ S. K. Morgan Ernest,² Brian J. Enquist,⁴ Eric L. Charnov³

Nee et al. (Reports, 19 August 2005, p. 1236) used a null modelto argue that life history invariants are illusions. We showthat their results are largely inconsequential for life historytheory because the authors confound two definitions of invariance,and rigorous analysis of their null model demonstrates thatit does not match observed data.

¹ Bauer Center for Genomics Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
² Department of Biology, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA.
³ Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
⁴ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: vsavage{at}cgr.harvard.edu

Read the Full Text

The editors suggest the following Related Resources on Science sites:

In Science Magazine

TECHNICAL COMMENTS Response to Comment on "The Illusion of Invariant Quantities in Life Histories": Sean Nee, Nick Colegrave, Stuart A. West, and Alan Grafen (14 April 2006)
Science 312 (5771), 198c. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1121675]
| Abstract » | Full Text » | PDF »

REPORTS The Illusion of Invariant Quantities in Life Histories: Sean Nee, Nick Colegrave, Stuart A. West, and Alan Grafen (19 August 2005)
Science 309 (5738), 1236. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1114488]
| Abstract » | Full Text » | PDF »